Jen Moran is the mother of nine children and eight grandchildren (so far). Her podcast and blog, Mommy of Many, ran from 2007-2010, a precursor to the larger family social media trend. Today, she lives in Northern California with her husband, Terry Moran. He founded the nonprofit, VetsBoats, where both of them work to provide a therapeutic sailing and boat restoration program for disabled veterans. This interview took place in 2008.
Kristen: Tell me about your childhood.
Jen: I was born cradle Catholic. My parents had eight girls in a row and then they got their boy!
We all went to CCD and we never missed Mass. When we were real little, my mom took us to daily Mass. You know, there were some challenges in my family. But no matter what the trials were, the answers my mom gave have truly become mantras of mine as well.
My kids come and complain to me and I say, “Is there something good that you can think of that God gave you that makes it easier?” That stems from that gift of faith from my mom. The things we say over and over, I think they get in there.
Kristen: What number child were you?
Jen: I was the oldest one… the example…the responsible one. But being human, well, I kind of failed myself. I met my first husband when I was 16. We met in April and we got pregnant in August. Really, it was being two stupid kids.
Kristen: Was he Catholic?
Jen: Yes, though kind of in name only. He was an altar boy, and they tried harder when grandma was around. He was an only child and his upbringing was completely different than mine.
Kristen: Did you consider an abortion?
Jen: I had a friend’s mom lecture me to at least consider an abortion. Thanks be to God that I did have my background. I knew that that wasn’t something I could do. He is adopted – it made sense to him that we consider an adoption.
Somehow my address had been shared and some prospective adoptive parents sent me packages. It was heartbreaking to me – what people go through who try to adopt! They basically send resumes of their lives! It definitely took an emotional toll on me. I’m 17 years old and the baby’s father and I weren’t even together.
But I knew I had to have that baby.
Kristen: How did your parents take it?
Jen: Oh, hard! Imagine adding your oldest daughter pregnant to the mix! My brother was four. They’ve got all these issues going on, and they were asking, “Where did we fail?” and they have seven other daughters. What is this going to mean for the rest of the girls?! Ultimately, the other girls saw the struggle I went through and decided it was too hard! So, it was a huge grace for everyone.
Kristen: You chose to be that single mom?
Jen: Yeah. After my daughter, who I named Kateri, was born, we went our separate ways. He only saw her three times, and that bothered me. When she was 9 months old, we moved to my grandparents’ house. I was working full time and going to school full time, and my parents watched her for me. For the first years of her life, she was the youngest child of a large family.
The biggest message for my life through the whole situation, was, “It doesn’t matter if you veer off the path God laid out for you. All you have to do is turn around and tell Him how much you want to be on His path, and He makes that path you’re on, His path.”
Really, I wish people believed this. Just turn around, and ask for His help and His will, and He’ll use the path you’re on to lead you where He wants you to go. Nothing is beyond Him! That might mean the path is longer or rockier, but if you allow Him to guide you, all paths can lead to Him.
Kristen: That is so incredibly comforting – and true! So how did you end up marrying your baby’s father?
Jen: He called me on her second birthday and said, “I’m ready to do this.” I remember thinking, “Oh, man. I just got my head around the fact that I am doing this on my own.” He had been a reservist in the Navy and went active during the Gulf War. He called me from there, and he sent an ATM card. It was an emotional time for him and for me.
Then he brought us out for a week to Camp LeJeune. He came out on leave and in September of 1991, he asked me to marry him. I said, “No,” and he asked a few more times. So, I ultimately said yes, and he went back to Camp LeJeune. But, I was already pregnant again.
Kristen: Again?!
Jen: Yeah. Facing a second pregnancy, and we still didn’t know each other. I let my parents know that he bought me a ring and proposed—and yet I am telling them I don’t want to get married.
My poor dad! I can still see his face—he was in such a state of shock. My parents insisted that we marry, and so we did. He left on deployment a month later, and came home in July, a month after our son JJ was born. The first time we lived together was with two kids away from home.
Jen Moran gives a pro-life talk at the Ave for Life event at Ave Maria University.
Kristen: It sounds really hard. What helped you keep it all together?
Jen: Yeah, it’s true. We had our second, third, fourth and fifth kids really close together. There were a lot of years where my head was down and we were just plowing forward. It was that first group of five kids who defined me as a mother– and set my work and prayer patterns.
Kristen: Why didn’t you stop after five children?
Jen: We had a trial in between. I had a miscarriage. Before, we felt cocky about having babies. Having kids was what we were good at, what we knew we could do. When we lost our little boy, it really changed our scope about our family. It was hard to find out it was a boy at the time, when we only had the one boy, JJ. We named our little son Samuel.
This little baby who never breathed taught us such a huge lesson. It is not about us. Through God and only through God, we were having these healthy babies. We needed to think about it more. We needed to be grateful, and to understand that they were not ours.
The doctors were afraid to put me under because I kept bleeding so much. And my first husband faced the reality that I could die and we had already lost the baby.
Kristen: What a difficult – and life changing experience! How did it change you and your family?
Jen: After Samuel, then we had this thankfulness in our lives, especially for each of our kids. That was Samuel’s gift to us. And it made it very easy to welcome four more children.
You can build a life out of nothing, or at least you can try. But God wants better than that for us, so much so that he keeps giving us those second chances.
Kristen: That’s pretty good for a reality check.
Jen: Yeah. In any relationship, we do fail others and they all fail us. We aren’t God. He wants us to remember to rely on Him, and maybe sometimes He takes away that security that we have in the humans in our lives, so we remember to go back to Him.
Postscript: Jen’s first marriage ended in divorce, and was annulled. To hear more about her story, listen to the My Secret Is Mine Podcast with Genevieve Kineke.
Volume Three of My Secret is Mine newsletter includes essays and discussions on Mulieris Dignitatem, On the Dignity and Vocation of Women, an apostolic letter written by St. John Paul the Great in 1988.
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